Also the same is the yearly $48 fee, that supposedly pays for all these “improvements”.

Also, no new “Official Updates” to pass on either from the Xanga Official “Liaison”, who can often be mistaken for Xanga PR even though he’s not an employee.

The “liaison” did offer to have his June blog comments section be a way for current Xangans to post their contact/blog info to share with others. This, at the 4 year mark with no updates to pass on from TheXangaTeam…..right. He is also suggesting that folks start sharing their posts on the Facebook site to “help keep Xangan’s connected”. Of course if Xanga were actually functional, Facebook wouldn’t be needed/suggested. Seems very BIZARRE for people to be paying $48/yr to blog on a site that promoted community, but needs FREE Facebook to actually create it…..???

Oh yeah, the “liaison” hasn’t updated his site since early July, another sign of service decay.

I think this will be the last “review” barring some breakthrough changes since everything remains the same.

Okay, I do have a Xanga, “non Xanga” update…..

A current search under “Xanga” on YouTube has turned up a Brazilian party music band who now goes by this name.

There was nothing new to report with all the issues of the 1st review still present. It was noted that the last site status update at the time was Feb 11, 2015.

Now we are in the 3rd year of Xanga’s 2.0 existence and the last official status update from the site is still Feb 11, 2015. That’s right, it’s absolutely identical to that from last years review. There must be a ton to learn about “themes” to keep them on that topic for so long.

So at this point, it’s crystal clear that they aren’t even trying to be professional with keeping former and current paying subscribers informed with their upgrade schedule and status. Hmm, didn’t they promise more communication when they were calling for donations from all their faithful users? Oh well, that promise must have gotten misplaced during the update to the WordPress platform.

But wait, there is an official Xanga appointed Liaison to help facilitate better communication between TeamXanga and users.

For reference, here’s the definition of Liaison:

“a person who helps organizations or groups to work together and provide information to each other”

I’ve seen many requests for updates from users, but for some reason the appointed liaison only updates with the following month after month: “Nothing new to report”

There is no follow up as to WHY there is nothing to report after all these months of silence. How this “helps” with communication is anyone’s guess. How can you be a liaison and not pass on information? A liaison is NOT a passive role!

But whatever you do, don’t demand Xanga take some accountability for their lack of transparency, or else this “liaison” will take offense and make it sound like the problem is with you instead. You can read my 2015 Xanga review for more details on that.

It’s like I stated in my past complaint- if you remain silent it’s perceived as acceptance and no effort is made to improve communications. If you complain, you either get a “I understand”, or “what are you doing to help?” and still communication from Xanga goes nowhere.

There’s a real alternate version of reality going over over there.

Anyway, all the above is nothing new and has been going on since the move to WordPress. However there is something new to report! I may not be the liaison but shall do so anyway. =)

Apparently Verizon, who recently bought the site “Yahoo”, is rumored to be buying Xanga as well. Was the writer serious or just making a joke at Xanga’s expense? Probably a joke, looking at its current state devoid of updates, progress as well as the bulk of former members.

The lack of updates would raise eyebrows even if it were still a free blogging site. As Xanga took close to $70K in pledge money and is now charging $48/yr for their service, the situation stands out glaringly- especially knowing they’ve been told numerous times that regular communication is most desired by their customers.

The “Community Based” Xanga that everyone enjoyed and appreciated ended with the shutdown of Xanga 1.0 and has yet to be reinstated on Xanga 2.0, despite all the promises made.

It should be abundantly clear to all that any hope to restore the old community is long past. Many People who would have continued to blog on Xanga have stopped altogether and those who still blog have moved on to other free platforms. Any excitement or momentum from the conversion to “2.0” has been lost long ago. The site now being “promoted” for latest member updates is facebook as Xanga has lost its front page since the conversion to 2.0.

The thing that bothers me most is the sense of injustice that Xanga has done for all the people that worked so hard for them to be able to update to Xanga 2.0. So many people were disappointed and have moved on- and all the while Xanga makes no apologies or updates on what their completion schedule is. To take money from people as well as charge them for services that are available on other sites for free, and still feel they don’t need to provide any type of regular updates is beyond the pale of customer disrespect.

So when the official appointed liaison EdLives (Joel) blogged about Xanga on August 12, which turned into another defense of Xanga’s current condition despite being into two years of this mess, I felt compelled to set the record straight with the true reality of the situation. That led to my original posted comment being “held for review”, my accusation of being censored, and all the brouhaha that followed.

Some may have the opinion that I’ve been overly harsh in my critique and response to EdLives’ posts. I believe he has confused his job responsibilities. As a liaison, you mutually represent two or more parties in their communication. However, he wasn’t doing this. Instead, as mentioned by Kamikaze_Zealot, he was really taking on the role as Xanga’s “PR” person in standing up for and defending Xanga’s shortfalls. Taking on the role of a PR person will of course be in direct conflict with being a neutral liaison and will likely land you in the crossfire. If you look at our exchanges he is definitely picking up and defending the Xanga flag as opposed to also representing the needs of the community.

I would like to see accountability and ownership of Xanga’s failure to deliver what they advertised in a timely manner and no explanation to justify it. Both Xanga and EdLives heavily promoted the switch to “2.0” but It seems to me neither will open up and just state what the true situation is.

That was just a year before they announced the impending shutdown of “1.0” I would think the fair/ethical thing would be to refund anyone who bought memberships at that time. Selling folks “lifetime” memberships that only last for a year is highly suspect.

June 4, 2013 – Edlives argues the case that the “ad based” revenue model won’t work in support of fee based blogging.

Here, he argues that the ad revenue model is flawed and destined to fail over time. I counter argue that his assessment is wrong and success depends of the company’s ability to market themselves to keep and grow their user base.

Of course the gigantic sustained success of Facebook, Google, Youtube, Tumblr, WordPress, BlogSpot, etc, clearly prove that the ad based revenue model is not only alive and well, but growing and providing new opportunities for individuals who can grow a sizable subscriber base. Facebook recently announced a milestone of having one billion users online in one day.

Of course we know that the current features of Free WordPress still greatly surpass “Fee based” Xanga 2.0 for 2+ years and counting…

Free WordPress provides regular updates, constant feature upgrades like themes, fonts, viewcounters (stats), likes, etc…, and I’m able to automatically cross post to other social network sites like Tumblr, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Path, or Facebook- one post is pushed out to the other sites if desired. Most media sites like Time, News (both local and national), Variety, Fortune, etc,.. are now in WordPress RSS format allowing you to subscribe to their sites and get direct updates in your feed. Of course all this comes with being able to cross communicate with other folks on many other social network platforms like BlogSpot/Tumblr, using your just your WordPress or Disqus login account. Unfortunately, none of these features are currently available on WordPress based Xanga 2.0, which is still lacking even the most basic search function to find/contact users.

The lack of communication between Xanga and the community is addressed yet again. It’s not as if Xanga is “in the dark” about the issue with their lack of communication – they’ve been told more than once, and while they apologize, their behavior remains the same.

It’s been about three weeks since the launch to “2.0” and the blogging site is in a sorry state with no updates from XangaCorp. The crowd is starting to get restless. The major 1st sign of trouble was Xanga’s Facebook account was going to be used to update people rather than Xanga. If you think my criticism is harsh, PrincessPowers makes me look quite tame by comparison.

More of the same – people wondering about progress and restoration of community features like the frontpage and EdLives doing his best to provide some assurances. All this- TWO YEARS AGO.

So it should be clear as day that both Xanga and Edlives were quite involved in advertising Xanga 2.0. Based on this I tend to get irritated when Edlives now responds to questions about the problems of Xanga 2.0 along the lines of “Hey, I’m just a volunteer, I don’t work for Xanga”, or “That’s up for John or someone from Xanga to answer” instead of twisting arms to get Xanga to honor their commitments to provide regular updates.

The defense that really gets to me is when he states “What are YOU doing to improve things?”. Can you imagine reporting a problem with a company and they try to turn it around on you as if it’s your responsibility? Bizarre! Makes absolutely no sense.

Customer: Hi power company, my service is out- when will it be restored? Your technicians haven’t arrived when you said they would

Power Company: What are YOU doing to help the situation?

Customer: ???

As I told him, people have every right to complain about services that were promised and not rendered and should NOT be the targets of reverse blaming. The victim blaming has to stop.

The truth is Xanga is basically having EdLives twist in the wind so their lack of promise fulfillment and customer contact makes him look like a bad guy as well. At least now he is being “somewhat” more neutral in his responses, although there is still ongoing defending of Xanga such as stating they are taking what we say seriously, but just not responding. The reality is not responding is action that shows they are NOT taking the concerns of the customer seriously at all.

If I were the liaison – I would be pushing John to do a live Q&A on Google hangouts or ask Alex to host to field user complaints and concerns. You can’t keep telling folks “You understand their anger or concerns” without pushing for the other side (ie, Xanga/John) to respond. Otherwise, you become the defacto “wall” that Xanga is hiding behind.

The complaints are far fewer these days as the majority of folks that had issues have long since moved on and stopped caring. In fact, it seems that of the remaining trickle of people still blogging there, most must be quite content with the current “alpha-beta” state of Xanga based on their silence or words of support to counter my noted areas of concern.

They state they are in “Site Tuning”. The Feb 11 update states they are now “starting” to move into features, which is typically the hardest and longest part of software development. At their current rate it looks like at least 3 – 5 more years to cover phases 3 and 4, making the likely “completion” no earlier than 2019.

I hope the remaining customers are Zen masters of patience- as they will certainly be given much time to practice it in the solitude and quiet of Xanga non updates.

(PS to EdLives, who has reviewed my blogs in the past – if you think I’m not being fair or correct in my comments or assessment of the situation, you’re more than welcome to post your side of the issue and state where I am in error.)

September 9th, 2013, was the last mass update provided by the “XangaTeam” when they went over to the “new” Xanga 2.0 “WordPress” format. After that,..silence….and more silence.

Unanswered were questions running through the mind of many- here are a few:

1) Why is Xanga 2.0, which is costing $48/yr, operating with less functionality and features than free WordPress?

2) What happened to the “Front Page” and other user and community friendly features Xanga 1.0 had?

3) When can we expect to see improvements to restore all the community centric features of Xanga 1.0?

4) if Xanga 2.0 is on the WordPress platform, why is it still shut off from the rest of the blogging community so that not even free WordPress users can leave comments?

5) I thought you guys said Xanga 2.0 was going to keep all the community features as “1.0” and would be a better deal than the free blogs like Blogspot and WordPress?

Days, weeks, and months passed by with nary a peep from Xanga as to what their status was and what they were doing. NOT ONE WORD. The only one saying anything was the volunteer Xanga helper EdLives who did his best to provide a positive spin to the situation.

During this time, the subscription clock was running – meaning folks were being charged to blog on a site that looks like the pre alpha version of free WordPress.

What was delivered was NOT what was offered – a new site that would have all the rich community features that made Xanga 1.0 stand out from the rest. People were NOT told the system they had pledged money to would be a bare bones version of free blogging sites and would remain in that state until further notice.

People wondered if Xanga had pulled a “bait and switch” and had taken the near $70 grand of crowdsource moula just for their own amusement.

After a year of silence the “volunteer cheerleader” EdLives mentioned that he had finally been able to communicate with Xanga CEO John and that an update would be forthcoming.

Before I begin, remember what Xanga 2.0 was marketed as – having the SAME community features as Xanga 1.0. A direct quote from an update from them last year:

“Community

Whenever anyone asks me what Xanga is all about, I always answer: “blog community.” To me, that’s what makes the site fun: you can blog, and there’s a community of people generally excited to read your posts (and vice versa).

I know a lot of people who have tried other blogging platforms, and they’ll often say that they feel they’re publishing into a vacuum… and that nobody is reading their blogs. We’re working to keep that warm community feeling on Xanga… so that when you post, your subs can quickly and easily chime in with a comment. (As part of that, we’ll be importing every single login over – along with all subscriptions/friends – so that your subs can continue to read your posts even if they’re not blogging on Xanga 2.0).

We’re incredibly excited about using the WordPress platform, as the publishing software is incredibly powerful. As we adapt it for use for Xanga 2.0, we’re working to make sure that all that power is combined with the warm fuzzy feeling of Xanga community love as well.”

Also, they noted that they would be more communicative going forward with the arrival of Xanga 2.0, with the community playing a greater role in guidance and control. The year of silence appears to contradict that notion however.

Anyway, EdLives’ answer to mine and others complaints about this lack of response was that we didn’t have all the info to justify our criticism and when the John’s update came to light, all would make sense. You can be the judge if this is the case. Here we go (my comments in blue)….

We want to thank everyone for being there for us. Without your involvement, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Here are a few of the things that we’ve been working on over this past year:

* We built out a new server system, and migrated thousands of websites over to the new servers * We fought off ongoing DDOS and brute password attacks that were slowing the site down * We’ve made further upgrades to our server setup over the past six months, to use new more powerful servers as they became available. * We’re planning one more server upgrade later this year, to take advantage of better and cheaper server systems that have become available.

(These hardware updates are nice, but this is the “back end” stuff- the stuff that is invisible to the customer, the blogger. For the PAYING customer, the more important items would be front end stuff like the user interface along with user features and operations.)

One area where we’ve dropped the ball is providing updates on all of the above. Initially we were fighting off the DDOS attacks, and didn’t want to tip off our attackers on our progress. So we focused on talking to our users one at a time, through our email support and help forums.

(So this is their excuse for over a YEAR of SILENCE? They act like no other company has to deal with “denial of service attacks”. Newflash- it happens to just about ALL major internet entities such as Facebook, Google, Blogspot, Amazon, and a host of other popular internet companies. It’s nothing new.

Besides that, how on earth do they think that justifies ZERO updates for a YEAR? They didn’t want to “tip off” the attackers? What does that have to do with any upgrades or new hardware purchased? And if this were the REAL reason for lack of updates, why not just state that as a simple update – that they are dealing with internet attacks without going into any details?

Two Words: LAME EXCUSE

IMO: They should just admit this was a screw up with no decent excuse and fully ACCEPT the blame rather than try to deflect it.

On to the next LIE – they focused on talking to users “one at a time”? I guess all the folks saying their emails and attempt at contacting Xanga went unanswered must be hallucinating…)

But more recently, we’ve largely defeated the ongoing DDOS and password attacks. The site has been up and stable, and we’re gearing up to make the further upgrades mentioned above. We’ll be providing more regular updates and communication, both on this blog and also on our Facebook page.

(The site may be stable, but it still has subpar functionality than that of free blogging sites. And didn’t they ALREADY say last year that they would be updating more? Xanga needs to learn that WORDS are CHEAP – ACTION Counts.)

So we’re working to communicate more regularly, and to start building the community teams that we mentioned earlier.

(As in a YEAR ago before they collected the funds and went silent)

First up: we’ve asked Joel of edlives.xanga.com to serve as a community liaison. You can reach him at his blog at edlives.xanga.com, or through Xanga’s facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/xanga. We will have a regular call with Joel to discuss feedback and ideas.

(Uh, really? Isn’t this what he was doing ALREADY? The only difference now is you are making it “official”?)

We’re also going to be working together to pull together a list of other areas where we could use help. If any come to mind, please let us know and we’ll discuss it with Joel in our next call! And as a thank you for sticking with us, we’re offering 6 months of free blog hosting to all of our paid members. Just email Eugenia at help@xanga.net, and she’ll add it the extra months to your account!

(So lets see- in return for one year of horrible blogging conditions with no updates that whole time, the reward to the diehards is 6 more months of broken website? Really? Even worse is folks who want this offer will have to request it as it isn’t being given out automatically.

Let’s take a moment to think about this- Xanga hasn’t updated for over a year – so most folks that did pay for subs have no idea there is a new Xanga update and a free six month offer. Why not just extend everyone’s sub by six months automatically? Oh yeah, if they did that, some folks who would have PAID another $48 to blog may put off doing that.

So it’s okay to leave paying users in the dark for over a year on a subpar blogging site, but it’s NOT OKAY to extend them the additional time automatically, because making money is more important, got it.)

Thank you for sticking with us over the past year. We’re looking forward to working together to build Xanga in the coming year.

That was it with no mention of any restoration of ANY of the community features of Xanga 1.0. This was it after a year of silence.

So was EdLives right? Does the above “update” adequately explain the year plus long silence and massively degraded service so that prior complaints were not justified?

To me the update did explain quite a bit- it made it CRYSTAL CLEAR that Xanga is finished and “Xanga 1.0” is history, not to be duplicated by anything Xanga offers for the foreseeable future.

It’s crystal clear that any business sense Xanga had at the beginning of its existence has left the building long ago. The first and most important rule in any business is that CUSTOMERS COME FIRST. You MUST do what it takes to convince new people to pay for your service and current customers to continue paying.

Imagine if Facebook, Google, or Amazon decided to offer extremely subpar service for an ENTIRE YEAR. Do you think they would still retain their customer base, or would the vast majority of folks migrate to other companies? And those are FREE sites! But Xanga thinks charging people for a service inferior to free blogging sites, and ignoring their customer base is the ticket to success.

The reality of the situation is Xanga already lost most of their users when they decided to put up a pay wall. Then they lost many of the folks who paid to blog during the continued poor functionality of their “new” Xanga 2.0 site. Now the 1 year subs are expiring and there is no incentive for anyone to continue to pay to blog under such poor conditions.

Xanga needed to restore the community features ASAP and they FAILED MISERABLY and don’t seem the least concerned about it.

There are so few people left that there’s little hope for any type of recovery and more subs expiring will be the final nails in the coffin.

If people want to restore the old “Xanga Style Community”, it will have to be done elsewhere without Xanga’s “help”.

About a year ago, Xanga Inc, shut down “Xanga 1.0” and launched “Xanga 2.0” on a “WordPress” platform, which was billed as a bold new upgrade to its aging predecessor. The new version has a pay-wall so users have to pay $48 a year for the privilege of blogging.

The initial launch of “2.0” was anything but smooth with many people not even aware Xanga 1.0 was shutting down- due to Xanga not sending a global email or creating a global splash page informing users of what was being planned. My two initial reviews on this transition can be seen here: (1) Preliminary Review, 2) Review). The prevailing hope of all those optimistic about Xanga’s “upgrade” back then was that things would improve over time and they would soon have their own comfortable and familiar Xanga back.

Well, a year has come and gone and unfortunately the poor quality of the site has barely improved, if at all. Users who have paid $48 to blog have had to deal with a system that operates far below the replaced Classic Xanga and even free WordPress. In addition, users also can’t communicate to any other blogging networks outside the Xangaverse environment and now see their subscriptions times nearing expiration, forcing them to pay up once more to continue operating in this deeply subpar environment.

The “Xanga 2.0 is Now a Reality” banner is turning out to be more of a “Mission Accomplished” moment instead.

To bring everyone up to speed or refresh one’s memory to how we got to this point, the timeline of events is as follows:

____________________________________________________

May 30, 2013 – The Xanga Team posts a message on their blog announcing that they are contemplating either shutting down Xanga in July, or porting it over to a more modern WordPress platform “if” users would be willing to contribute a total of $60K before the July deadline.

This created a big stir from all those who got the message. The problem is the message was just posted on their blog, so users who don’t visit the front page to look for a small section that had Xanga Team updates never got the word, which included Xangans in “Hong Kong” who don’t have a Xanga Team update section. This meant the vast majority of folks had no idea Xango 1.0’s days were numbered.

The pressure of just having a six week deadline for the community to raise the funds felt more like a gun to everyone’s head to either pay up or have their online blogs wiped out. Folks wondered why there was this sudden move to urgency rather than getting an earlier message from Xanga to allow more time to respond.

“Through July 15th: We will contact our registered members to let them know about the fundraiser, and also allow any and all users to download their blogs and media files for free.”

This NEVER happened. I don’t know of any user who received any email notice of Xanga’s impending shutdown or fundraising efforts. You have to ask yourself why wouldn’t they notify everyone? It could have been done with just a simple startup splash page when the user logged on. You would think that they would want to reach as many current and former users as possible for their pledge drive. This was just the beginning of many questionable moves by “Team Xanga”.

After this bombshell of an announcement, and the pledge drive/deadline being only six weeks long, “Team Xanga” went into a media blackout with no new updates for over two weeks, leaving that to a volunteer not employed by Xanga, EdLives. This is followed shortly by a newly created hashtag, #wearexanga to promote the pledge drive.

Why would a firm in crisis seeking pledges from their community under a tight deadline not assign some PR type of person to communicate other than a non company volunteer? Answer: they clearly either do not understand how to run a business or they don’t care enough about the community to address their concerns in a timely manner.

Can you imagine if this were attempted in professional circles? Picture this: “CNBC reports that Xcorp has no one available to answer questions about their announced crisis, but someone not employed with the company is willing to try and field questions or pass them onto Xcorp staff”. Can you imagine how much negative backlash that would generate?

During this time non Xanga employee Edlives promotes the pledge drive on a daily basis and extolls the virtues of what “Xanga 2.0” would have over the current free blogging sites as told to him by “Team Xanga”. He also arrives at the conclusion and begins “preaching” that ad-revenue based websites are not viable for long term survival, trying to justify Xanga’s switch to a pay-only website.

I can tell you without any doubt or reservation that his conclusion is just WRONG. He used failed websites and the poor ad revenue state of “Xanga 1.0” to support his case, but glossed over successful ad-based revenue websites like Google, YouTube, WordPress, and Facebook to name a few. He even stated that Facebook was on the decline phase of its corporate life cycle. At the time he wrote that, Facebook stock was in the low $20’s. Now a year later Facebook’s stock value is in the mid $70’s and etching out all time highs. Assuming he is also reflecting on opinions given to him from “Team Xanga”, it suggests they are unwilling or unable to address the true problems of their business weakness and in turn, just assign the fault to an outside force rather than their own actions. This is a key reason many businesses fail – refusing to accept blame and take action to improve.

Xanga was given a gift in having a “volunteer” being such a cheerleader for their new product as it gives them legal protection since he’s not employed with the company if all his glowing expectations of the new Xanga fail to pan out.

Despite the more realistic and negative warnings about Xanga’s pay-wall business plan by myself and others like former Xanga bloggers Cagey and CoolMonkey, he always had a positive counter to them. Unfortunately, enough people were convinced to support the plan rather than try to get “Team Xanga” to change course at a time when potential pledge payers had the most leverage.

June 17th, 2013 – “Team Xanga” CEO John Hiler finally reappears for an official update. The excuse for the delay in updating was “personal issues”, which brings up the question- aren’t there other employees who could have provided updates? After all, Xanga isn’t a one person operation, but from the lack of response you might think it was a “no man” operation.

It includes a Q&A segment – here’s an example:

____

How are you going to reach other members?

It’s going to be tough to reach a lot of our members from earlier years, since in most cases we don’t have their latest email address. So in addition to press outreach, we’re also working on a marketing campaign that will help us virally send out the word on what’s going on! More on that soon.

____

Does anyone know what that “viral” marketing campaign was? I for one didn’t see it nor did anyone else I’ve spoken with.

June 30th, 2013– Xanga CEO John appears on Blogtalkradio. During the radio show he mentions that all current and former premium user’s blogs would be transferred over and was researching to see if all “TRUE” user blogs could be transferred over as well.

Portion of transcript of conversation:

______________

Alex: Clarify which accounts are automatically transferred.

John: Focusing on bringing over all Premium members. Also going to [bring] over all accounts that have been Premium at one time. It will be a lot of work to transfer accounts over. All user accounts will be transferred even if blog doesn’t transfer. Users can still log in, read their subs and comment.

Alex: What about the True members?

John: We can look into whether we can support that. It’s a question of numbers; how many we can transfer over. We want to move over as many as possible.

Alex: There may be people who decide they want to continue on xanga after July 15. Will they have lost all their entries or will their old blog still be somewhere?

John: Have they ever been a Premium member? First we’re going to move over the current Premium members. Then we’ll move over those who have been Premium in the past. Then we’ll get as many transferred as possible.Others can download their archives in the XML format and transfer them.

______________

This turned out to be FALSE – with the only blogs transferred being current premium members and folks paying the $48 ransom fee. There was never an explanation or apology for the change of plans.

July 8, 2013 – With just one week left before the pledge drive deadline, “Team Xanga” finally issues another update to answer some of the questions all the community members have. The update mentions the importance of the “Xanga community”:

“Whenever anyone asks me what Xanga is all about, I always answer: “blog community.” To me, that’s what makes the site fun: you can blog, and there’s a community of people generally excited to read your posts (and vice versa).

I know a lot of people who have tried other blogging platforms, and they’ll often say that they feel they’re publishing into a vacuum… and that nobody is reading their blogs. We’re working to keep that warm community feeling on Xanga…”

You will see the utter IRONY of that statement as we continue…

The July 15th deadline is extended to the end of the month.

July 9th – July 30th – Another data blackout with “Team Xanga” keeping users in the dark about its fate as the deadline clock winds down. Not one update during this time and the pledge drive amount received at that time is far from the $60K goal. Things look pretty grim. Most Xanga users move on to other sites.

July 31, 2013 – On the last day of the pledge drive, a new update is finally posted from “Team Xanga”. John the Xanga CEO announces he is making a contribution of $10K, effectively lowering the pledge goal to $50K. The pledge drive deadline is also extended, again, to end of August.

With about $48K in pledges at the time, it’s pretty much a done deal that reaching $50K by Aug 31 won’t be a problem- ensuring “Xanga 2.0” will launch.

Question: Would a company that really cared about their community/customers let them twist in the wind and worry about their future right until the deadline date when they had to know earlier about extending the deadline as well as reducing the pledge amount needed?

No updates closing in on a year and counting? Is this the action of a company that truly cares about the community they asked to donate money?

Is this their version of “warm community feeling?” It’s like they collected their money and then gave those who donated half a peace sign. The level of community disregard and disrespect is absolutely amazing.

Here are some of the new features we’d be able to offer out of the box:

* Custom themes – you’ll be able to use custom themes we’ll pull from around the web, as well as add/edit CSS.* Plugins – We will provide a library of powerful plugins that you can activate and configure on your site.* Group blogging – At long last, you’ll be able to allow others to blog on your site… and share moderation rights on your blog.* Threaded comments – We’ll look into threaded comments, which would allow readers to reply to comments in a threaded manner* Better spam controls – Every user would have their own spam queue that they could configure and manage.* Moderation features – You would be able to put keywords, IPs and usernames into moderation on your blog.

I crossed out the features that were not only MIA “out of the box”, but are STILL absent today.

The best way to describe “current” Xanga is like an “alpha” version of WordPress that lacks all the modern features and makes “Xanga 1.0” functionality look like state of the art blogging.

5)Xanga is still “landlocked” with being unable to see or leave messages on other blogs outside of Xanga including “free” WordPress– leaving folks trapped in a fishbowl that has gotten considerably smaller.

Even worse, there are no search options of any kind so good luck finding other users.

6) Net traffic volume is in the basement

Most people blog to have their posts be seen by others on the web – the more the better. Xanga’s “1.0” net traffic wasn’t that great, but in “2.0”, it’s abysmal:

Healthy Net Traffic of “Free” WordPress Over a Year:

Monthly unique user traffic is averaging around 34 million…giving the site a ranking of being in the top “31”.

Here’s the Net Traffic of $48/mo Xanga Over a Year:

Xanga’s monthly unique user traffic dropped from over 200k in “1.0” to under 40K now, giving it a ranking of “50,607”.

You sure wouldn’t blog on Xanga to be “discovered”, although it might be good for a witness protection program.

5) For the “privilege” of working in this ultra degraded environment, “Team Xanga” is still treating this as a working service worth paying for and running the clock on everyone’s subscriptions.

When I requested subscriptions be extended until the site is fully functional, I was politely told to send in $48 and directed to a paypal site for renewal. They feel their current level of service is worth charging $48/yr for.

7) No respect or consideration of any kind for their most loyal customers

Those who remained on Xanga through the years and didn’t jump ship to the newer platforms like Facebook got the shaft as their reward.

Their most loyal and active base of community, the TRUE users, were just cast off like garbage. The real sad part is how many of these users went to great lengths to help raise funds for the pledge drive- some even buying multiple year memberships, only to be forgotten and ignored once the monies were collected.

So much for any significance or appreciation of the badge of loyalty……

Here we see yet another ENORMOUS mistake – getting rid of all their built in beta alpha testers.

As subscriptions expire, why on earth would anyone be motivated to renew in Xanga’s current abysmal state, and who would be encouraged to join when they can get far better service from free blogging sites? Free WordPress is worlds better than “WordPress powered” $48/yr Xanga. So the active bloggers list on Xanga shrinks even more.

The end result is blogging content on Xanga will decrease further, making it even more boring and unattractive to current and potential users. For being one of the senior blogging companies, Xanga is forgetting the prime reason why free blogging started in the first place. Blogs represent content, which attracts more people. Xanga now thinks that people want to blog on a site that has minimum user blogging content. Yeah, this will be as popular as folks wanting to go to an empty night club.

There seems to be just one person who remains strongly optimistic about Xanga- its number one “volunteer/cheerleader” Edlives. Ed still maintains that the site is just in “transition” and will be eventually improving, even though a YEAR has passed with no significant updates. That’s a heck of a transition timeframe- especially when folks are being charged during this period.

The actual pledge drive site to “Save Xanga” has been taken down, but as we know, nothing on the internet is truly erased- here’s a final archived snaphot: Xanga Crowdhoster

They raked in over $68K to charge folks $48/yr for a site that is far inferior to free blogging sites. Nice.

Something is missing on that final Crowdhoster snapshot – the section for all the “Under $48” donors- but not to worry – there’s an older snapshot that has it. Here’s what it says:

So everyone who contributed $1 and up should have been on a “Thank You” post created by “Team Xanga”. This also NEVER HAPPENED – just another broken promise.

Surprisingly, quite a few folks who have paid $48+ to blog continue to be good natured and patient about the persistent state of non functionality that resembles NOTHING like the beloved Xanga of old, classic “Xanga 1.0”.

But for the majority of paid users as well as former “free” community members, we know a hot mess when we see it. Compared to “Xanga 1.0”, “Xanga 2.0” is the XANGAPOCALYPSE.

This is the standard reaction when someone from “Xanga 1.0” checks out “Xanga 2.0”:

(Note: This is a “Pinned Blog” – newer blogs below this one)

Soullfire is Bringing Sexy Community Back** Former Xangans – Like and Reblog if you support this idea ** It’s been close to a month OVER SIX MONTHSA YEAR TWO YEARS since Xanga has launched it’s “updated” “Xanga 2.0”, driven with the WordPress engine, and it’s still operating well below the “free” WordPress state. The “community” that was, disappeared with the end of Xanga 1.0 with the loss of free blogging, along with all of “1.0’s” community centric features like having a front page, ring groups, and general areas where users could find each other and congregate. Xanga has given no updates – so no one over there knows how long the “non community” condition will last. Many former Xangans like myself have moved their general blogging over to “free” WordPress but are also feeling a general loss of overall community that “Xanga 1.0” had. After using my WordPress site more often, I realized that it has certain features that will allow the former Xanga community to reconnect. The answer lies in the “Reader” section, which is accessed by the top menu bar: In the Reader section, on the right hand side, there’s a “Topics” exploration search column underneath “Find Friends”: The topics search works by searching all the “Tag” keywords put in a blog and displays the blogs that have a match. Below shows an example of the Tag area in a new blog: Tag words go on the bottom line separated by commas. So once you’ve published a blog with certain tag words, it can be searched by others using the “Topics” search function. Now here’s where the Xanga community restoration comes into the picture. All that’s needed are some common “key words” used as tags that will allow users to find posts by former Xangans. Searching on a particular keyword will be similar to using the Xanga “Blog Rings” to find a group of posts related to a similar interest. Okay, to set this up, Xangans need to do the following: Post a blog stating what your Xanga name was and what your current name is now. In this blog use the tag word “ID_Xanga“. This will let people search for other former Xanga users using “ID_Xanga” as well as identify the Xangans who have changed their usernames. The beauty of this is it will only pull up the blogs that use this tag, so you will have an exclusive Xanga search feature. Next, when blogging, include the tag word “FreeXanga“. This will allow folks to find the latest blogs of former Xangans. Following this format, we can now use keywords to group blogs by interest or subject, just like the former “Xanga 1.0” Blog Ring or “Ish” sites. I’ve created a few tag words to get us started: QOTD_Xan – Use this tag word to post with a question of the day Dollarish_Xan – Use this tag word to post with a money/savings/economic blog Politicish_Xan – Use this tag to post with a political related blog Rant_Xan – Use this tag to post with a rant type of blog Drama_Xan – Use this tag for drama blogs – for the drama lovers, haha. =) Townhall_Xan – Use this tag for general community info. This would be the tag to use when introducing new tag words to create a new search group. FreeXanga – Use this tag in all your blogs to make them “Xangan” searchable. I added “Xan” to the tag word topics to make it unique to Xangans, and it provides the general format for creating new search terms/groups. “ID_Xanga” need only to be used once for identification and to create a search list. I think this should work to help restore the “Xanga 1.0” style of community on WP, with the super bonus of now having a new world of people available to meet as well! Note: The max number of searchable tag words is 9, so don’t add too many tags words to your blog. ** Like and Reblog this and pass the word around if you support this idea – the “FREE” solution to bringing back community “Xanga 1.0” style! =) **

Xanga has reached the two week mark of its return as “Xanga 2.0” and not much has changed in improving user functionality. It continues to operate far below what “Free WordPress” offers.

Summary of Xanga 2.0 w/WordPress engine issues:

1) Not able to directly comment on replies. You can leave a comment on a blog, but not directly reply to a comment made. The exception to this is if the comment is made on your blog, you can reply using the WP dashboard feature, but it’s not intuitive, nor convenient.

2) Your username isn’t “linked” (clickable) to your website- which means someone has to formally type out your full Xanga address to get to your site if they wish to visit on seeing a comment made. There’s a workaround for this, but again, it’s inconvenient and non intuitive, as well as a potential security risk.

3) Spotty notification of replies to blogs, or comments made by email. Some people get them, while some don’t. No immediate online notification.

4) No means to search for users or blogs on the site. The ONLY way to find active users is to first check your sub/follower list for active blogs to see who if any are commenting.

5) No ability to change site appearance or use of Themes.

6) Can only see “Xanga users” blogs and no one else outside of Xanga.

7) Xanga 1.0’s best features- Front Page, Top Blogs, Most Rec’d, Private Messaging, “Ish” Forums, etc.., are gone- and along with them, any true sense of community.

The biggest issue by far has been people leaving messages on the help board about “missing blogs” and wanting to know where their blogs went. There are also complaints from those who contributed, but have not had their blogs restored. This outcome was to be expected since the main message put on the site was only viewable first on the bottom right corner of the Front Page. So you really had to be looking for it in order to find it. A message was later put on user pages in the upper left corner asking for contributions to “Xanga 2.0”, with no mention of any impending shutdown or change to “pay to blog” format. The message was also easy to miss unless intentionally looked for.

The “billboard type” pages now being used to announce the arrival of “Xanga 2.0” would have served greatly it letting people know in advance, but were never used. They never used their private messaging feature to notify users either. In the end, users who never visited the Front Page or were away for a few months were greeted with a rude surprise with the changeover.

Typical messages in the help section are like this:

“My past 9 years are gone!!!

I am so heart broken! I was just on my xanga two weeks ago and I visit the site three days ago to see it is undergoing an update. That is great!

HOWEVER, I had no idea that this was happening and now the past 9 years of my life are gone. Apparently I had to pay money as a premium customer or send in campaign money?! Why!? Are you telling me that now I will never get my blogs back?

This is ridiculous and I need an email back ASAP! I am furious because this xanga has my heart and soul poured into it.”

Since so few got the message, many didn’t archive their blogs and made the unpleasant discovery that their blogs were missing. Xanga’s initial “Welcome to Xanga 2.0” page made no mention of how to obtain archived blogs other than buying a new membership to get ones blog transferred over. This left the impression to some that they were being coerced to pay to get their blogs back. This led to an online petition being created and shortly thereafter the Xanga Billboard page was modified to notify users how they could get their archived data back at no charge. Another bad PR move brought about by the lack of good communication.

Some of those who knew about the coming changes and paid for a membership were also caught up in the same net of confusion/frustration. Here’s a recent message from a paid user who paid but didn’t get their blog restored:

“Contributed, Blog Still Not Showing Up (Will Pull Donation Soon)

This is the fourth time I’ve have to post this, but the team hasn’t listened or responded to me in any way. I contributed the full year ($48) and my blog still does not show up. I’ve emailed John twice and even left a comment with the situation on the Xanga team’s page. My blog and its posts has still not been migrated over. If nothing is done by the end the week, I will pull my donation from Crowd Tilt.”

The XangaTeam must be deluged trying to answer all the help requests that are coming in- most of which could have been avoided by proper communication.

Bad communication has been the main word of the day when it comes to the shift to the new Xanga, and nothing has really changed. Since there is no longer a Front Page, there is no longer a focal point of information to use. They have a twitter account but the site hasn’t been updated much since the launch, and the same applies to their facebook account as well.

At a time like this updates should be made every few days since there is much confusion and lack of functionality.

The updated network traffic numbers of “New Xanga” also show dramatic changes, and not for the better.

Daily Net Traffic Measurement for 1 Month:

What was once a mighty river has now been reduced to less than a trickle of internet activity. Traffic went from being over 80 thousand users daily to less than 400, just 0.45% of its former volume. The chart traffic drop clearly shows the date of the shutdown/reopening.

The funny thing is folks were constantly told by Xanga’s “unofficial” spokesperson that the drop in traffic seen by all in July/August was just due to Xanga being in a “transitional phase” and that things would be picking up once they moved to the new version. It’s now clear that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The current trend for the last two weeks also leaves little room for optimism:

Daily Net Traffic Since Xanga 2.0 Opened For Business (Start date: 9/3/13):

After “peaking” to 1,894 users on September 4th, net traffic has been steadily declining to the sub 400 lows now seen. Not a good sign for a relaunch of a product aimed at attracting new users and publicity.

Here’s a snapshot of Xanga’s traffic count from before the pledge drive was announced to current day:

Xanga made the announcement at the end of May. You can see that it caused a temporary blip up of activity in June.

Taken as a whole, the lack of service functionality and extremely limited traffic brings up some very real, yet awkward questions.

The first of which is how can Xanga feel justified in charging $48/year for use of a site in such poor shape? Free WordPress easily beats current Xanga in all areas of usability and convenience. The state of Xanga’s software has been described as worse than “beta” level, making it “alpha”, or some would even argue pre-alpha.

Users were “promised” that Xanga would maintain its look and feel despite being on WordPress, and that WordPress would just be the engine driving the new software. The reality is current Xanga is more a poorly functioning copy of the free WP version than anything like Xanga 1.0.

People were asked to donate $48, double the old yearly premium fee of $24 for “Xanga 1.0” for the right to blog on “Xanga 2.0”, and in return, they were told they would have a more “user-friendly” and “community” based experience than what current free blogging offers.

Currently this isn’t the case at all, and it’s just a matter of time before even their most devoted paying fans start complaining loudly about deception and being sold a bill of goods.

Since Xanga basically charged for “memberships” instead of just asking for contributions, I would think they are now legally on the hook to provide a quality of service meeting the standards that were stated/promised. If people demand refunds, will they be honored or will the amount paid be considered an nonrefundable “donation”?

Another question is how can Xanga hope to advertise for and attract new users with its software in such a sad state? Its current capacity would have trouble getting even free users to sign up, let alone paying ones.

Is the membership clock ticking- meaning are users being charged during this pre-alpha testing phase?

How long can users expect to make do with these sub standard conditions?

These questions and more demand consistent and steady communication from management, which has not been the case at XangaCorp, and there’s no reason to expect anything new in this area.

People using “Xanga 2.0” as paying members are mostly remaining upbeat and positive, but I suspect the mood of many will grow increasingly negative the longer conditions remain at such a low level state. Xanga now has a new deadline to beat – getting their software to operate as promised before the bulk of their paying users grow disfranchised and start demanding refunds.